Foldable tents have widely been used by the military for thousands of years. Due to the ease of usage, foldable tents are well-received by military troops. Generally, there are different types of hub used by foldable tents. One type of hub is such that the ends of the supporting poles are laminated and shaped round headedly (“laminated ends”). There is a tiny hole formed within the centre of the laminated ends and hollow-elastic pins (“pins”) are inserted thereinto. When the supporting poles are unfolded or retracted, they then use the pins as a centre of rotation. However, it is unavoidable that when the tents are unfolded, the tents will tend to rotate slightly in a direction between the vertical and the axis of the pins. Under such a situation, there is a possibility that the laminated ends might be bent. There is yet another type of hub similar to the one described above with the pins being removed and replaced with a ring with an opening at one end. In the first type of hub, every supporting pole is accompanied by a pin whereas in the second type of hub, several supporting poles are capped with the ring. Assembly of such a structure is troublesome especially due to the limited space provided thereby during maintenance of the tent makes it difficult to perform work thereon. Furthermore, to replace one supporting pole, the tent has to be pulled apart in order to make the necessary replacement. This poses considerable difficulty due to the large sizes of tents.
These two types of hub share a common disadvantage in that both the laminated ends and the main body of the supporting poles are connected using pins. Moreover, the pins of neighbouring supporting poles face each other. This will then affect the retracting of the supporting poles because during retracting, the heads of the pins are in contact with each other thereby hindering with the folding of the tents. In addition, wear-and-tear happens easily when the pins are in frequently contact with each other during retracting of the supporting poles.
Hence, in order to address the foregoing disadvantages of the two types of hubs as described above, the current invention uses a simpler hub assembly for solving the problem.